I've
decided to devote today's column to a topic we all know and love: automotive
styling. Now, you may not be aware of
this, but I happen to be something of an expert on automotive styling, thanks
to my time at Porsche. "The 911 could use a little freshening,"
I would say to my co-workers, as I walked through the hallowed halls of our
offices in Stuttgart. "Are you supposed to be here?" they would
reply. It was an excellent time, and
there are a lot of things that I really miss about it, namely the tradition,
and the passion, and the camaraderie, and the health insurance.

Anyway:
back to styling. Regular readers will
note that I tend to avoid writing about styling, except when it's absolutely necessary, like that time I did a column on how the Lexus corporate grille could, at any moment, sprout
fangs and begin eating defenseless schoolchildren. That was a public service announcement,
really.

The Lexus GX460 is the ugliest car on sale today. There, I said it. I said it so you didn't…
Read more Read more

The
reason for my avoidance is that styling is highly subjective. For instance: I might one day mention that
the new Maserati Ghibli is rather ugly.
To most car people, this sounds like a totally normal opinion that a
person might have, especially if that person has eyes. But some angry reader, some Ghibli enthusiast, might see this
opinion and become violently mad, to the point where he sends me an e-mail
about how he plans to break into my house and bash me over the head with a
Maserati Ghibli scale model as I sleep.
Maybe then I'll change my mind about the Ghibli's styling, what with the
brain damage.

So I generally
try to avoid this sort of thing. But
today's column breaks the mold, because we're going to talk about a subject
that really needs some more attention.
And that topic is: Audi sedans.

I don't
know if you're aware of this, but Audi is currently offering three different
sedans in this country: the A4, the A6, and the A8. This is actually a fairly conservative lineup
compared to, say, arch-rival BMW. BMW
offers a sedan version of everything it
sells, including several coupes.
There are even hatchbacky sedan versions of cars that are already sedans. It won't be long before BMW changes its
slogan from "The Ultimate Driving Machine" to "We Make a Sedan Version of Your
Color Printer."

But
back to Audi. The reason I think you
might not be aware that Audi currently offers three different sedans is that
Audi's sedan lineup looks, to a casual observer, oh, maybe a little dull.
What I mean here is that if Audi's sedan lineup were a baseball
game, it would be the kind that ends 3-1, and all the runs were scored by the fourth
inning. The A7 would be the
seventh-inning stretch, when the mascot comes out and sprays water on the
grounds crew.

I came
to this conclusion yesterday when I encountered an A4 in traffic. What happened was, I got up behind the A4,
which I think you will all agree is a fairly common occurrence if you live in
the kind of place that has a lot of a) college sororities, or b) PR firms. So I did what any red-blooded American male
would in this situation, which is that I cut a bunch of people off to get a
better look at the driver. Oh, sure, I
was in my Nissan Cube, but I was fully prepared to tell her that I also have a
Ferrari.

But
then something happened: I looked inside and it wasn't an attractive woman behind the wheel. It was
an old man! So I did a double-take,
and he did a double-take, probably
because some guy in a Nissan Cube was staring at him, and that's when I
discovered that I was actually looking at an A8. That's right, folks: I mistook an A4, noted
conveyance for window-mounted sorority decals, for a full-size Audi A8 luxury
sedan.

So I
went home to do some research, and that's when I discovered something: the A4,
A6, and A8 now look almost entirely identical.
It's true. In fact, the image at
the top of this article might just be different trim levels of the A6; you
wouldn't know.

Now, I
admit that there are two
distinguishing features that you can use to tell apart the Audi sedans. One is LEDs.
The A4 has roughly seven, while the A8 could guide damaged ships to the
mainland. Seriously: if the spotlight with the bat signal ever goes out, the
people of Gotham City could still summon Batman using an A8 and some well-trimmed
post-it notes.

The
other distinguishing feature is, of course, the people who drive them. All of that is still the same. A8 buyers are still men in their 60s. A4
owners remain women in their 20s. And A6
people are still middle-aged guys who get employee pricing because they know
someone at the Audi dealer, or else they would've bought a 5-Series.

But
aside from that, you can't tell the Audi sedans apart – and that's a serious
problem. For an illustration of why it's
such an issue, I present to you the case of Grover, an 84-year-old rich guy
that I just made up. Grover lives in
Palm Beach. "Not West Palm Beach," he
reminds me.

When
Grover goes to the Mercedes dealer, he discovers that the S-Class looks nothing
like a C-Class. It's big. It's opulent.
It's beautiful. "It's got the
presence of five C-Classes," Grover remarks.
(This makes no sense, and Grover's caretakers assure me his children have
started the process of taking away his driver's license.)

Meanwhile,
when Grover goes to the Lexus dealer, he discovers the LS460 looks nothing like
an IS. One is a sport sedan, Grover
thinks, while the other looks like the kind of state limo they'd use in a
country that isn't as good as ours.
(Grover is a military veteran. Just ask him.)

But
when Grover goes to the Audi dealer, he's dumbfounded. "Why would I pay $90,000 for a
top-of-the-line car that looks just like the $35,000 base model?" Grover
asks. "I'm sorry, sir," the salesman
responds. "Did you say your name was … Grover?"

But
Grover raises a good point, and I don't mean the one where he says there
wouldn't be any Communism if "that
asshole Truman" had left MacArthur in command.
I mean he's right that Audi has succeeded in making its sedans little
more than shoe sizes. Right now, you can
choose between small, medium, and large, with little differentiation in between
– and that's not much of an incentive for wealthy shoppers to spring for a
high-dollar A6 or A8.

Instead,
you'd think most people would go with something else; something different;
something that tells everyone else that they've spent big money on a new
car. Definitely not a Maserati Ghibli,
though. Those are ugly.

@DougDeMuro is
the author of Plays With Cars. He owned an E63 AMG wagon and
once tried to evade police at the Tail of the Dragon using a pontoon boat. (It
didn't work.) He worked as a manager for Porsche Cars North America before
quitting to become a writer, largely because it meant he no longer had to wear
pants. Also, he wrote this entire bio himself in the third person.